Although the title refers to spelling, it totally relates to pronunciation as well.
Hope you enjoy it, as I did! :-)
I came upon this video by Ed Rondthaler a couple of days ago and thought I should share it with you. Although the title refers to spelling, it totally relates to pronunciation as well. Hope you enjoy it, as I did! :-)
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My APPI 2015 presentation about the e-dictionary, Pronunciation Made Easy..., is now available in Slideshare. (Click the image to watch it.) Hope you enjoy it and will download the "free" sample of the e-dictionary so that you can take a closer look and see for yourself how intuitive, learner-friendly and effective the "bridging L1 and L2" pronunciation strategy is. While you're at it, please sign up for the newsletter. The form is in the "Home" tab. Comments are always welcome! I'll be presenting on "Making a Difference... in Pronunciation" on April 30 at the 29th APPI Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. The presentation will be about my e-dictionary. Here's a part of the abstract: "Pronunciation Made Easy, an e-dictionary, is always handy whether at the click of the mouse or touch of the screen. It's intuitive and learner-friendly. It's targeted at beginners. But also at intermediate learners. And it's full of useful words." I will upload the presentation to Slideshare soon after and will share the link here. And I thought that creating the dictionary was the most difficult part of the process. How wrong I was! Promoting it has been the hardest part. First, selling is not in my genes, DNA, whatever... Though I have connections, they're much more abroad than at home. And what I really need is an audience at home, in my country. I need a Portuguese-speaking audience, mainly in Portugal. It would be good to be able to penetrate the Brazilian market as well, and the Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. Second, it would be very helpful to have some background in marketing. I don't. I have connections in social platforms, but that doesn't seem to be enough. No, I don't want things to happen magically, overnight. But I expected more "word of mouth" and "word of mouse" by now. I continue reading articles about all this and trying to organize myself, but it hasn't been easy. If it were, I guess it would lose part of the interest and challenge. :-) I won’t give up, though. Because I believe in the value of my product. It was “tried, tested and proven” in class for six years with the help and collaboration of hundreds of students. ******** This is the last post in this series of eight. Any suggestions, comments or feedback are welcome. It was the beginning of June 2014 and I was in the phase of exploring the sale of the e-dictionary. Totally uncharted territory for me. Once again, I read quite a bit about it and came upon names such as Smashwords and E-junkie. At this point I was sure that I'd publish in pdf, however, I wanted to find a way to protect my dictionary as best as possible from unethical copies. In life there are certain serendipitous events that have a perfect timing. This was one of them. I came upon a post by Radical English friend, Judy Thompson, about Jason West. At a certain point she said: "...he absolutely blew me away with his refreshing and highly successful approach to teaching people to speak English comfortably in a very short span of time...". That totally sparked my curiosity. I wanted to know more, so I went to his company website, English Out There, and noticed that I could download one of his e-books about his teaching approach. And it was in pdf. Just what I needed in order to keep checking things that were going through my mind. This is what Judy wrote in the intro to our group video recorded in l'Albi, Spain, in mid-October 2014. It's in our Radical English YouTube channel. "What makes a Radical Teacher and why they matter to you Radical Teachers simplify and accelerate the English learning process. Here are five of them telling their stories at a recent conference in Spain. Each one experienced an 'aha moment' that changed their approach to teaching/learning forever." Here's something very interesting that I came across this morning. I know some of these words. What I like most about them is the weird mix of words in each, their crazy sounds and the way you spell some of them. Above all, their pronunciation.
Let me try to help Portuguese-speaking learners pronounce them in a very easy way. The /a/ sound is like the "a" in agora. kerfuffle /karfafel/ hullaballoo /halabalú/ cacophony /kakófani/ ragamuffin /ráegamafin/ whippersnapper /uíparsnáepar/ gobbledygook /góbeldigúk/ gibberish /djibarich/ poppycock /pópikók/ discombobulate (disskanbóbiuleit/ flummox /flamakz/ curmudgeon /karmadjan/ lackadaisical /láekadeizikel/ woebegone /uoubigón/ lollygag /lóligáeg/ frankenfood /fráenkanfúd/ Puzzled by a few of my sounds?! Why not take a look at my e-dictionary next door? Sorry, I meant in the next tab above. ;-) Interested in making a difference? I am. In fact, I did. In hundreds of Portuguese EFL students for several years. How? I came up with a strategy to make the pronunciation of English intuitive and learner-friendly. What's so different and unique about it? It bridges the L1 and L2. I use Portuguese sounds to show the pronunciation of English words. It came up to me in class one day, twelve years ago, and it had immediate results. Students used to mispronounce everyday English words on a regular basis. And they were in their third year of English! :-( I started with common words such as 'I', 'apple', 'tea', 'teacher', 'student'. I wrote the equivalent Portuguese sounds between slashes: /ai/, /aépel/, /tí/, /títchar/ and /stiudant/. Bingo! It worked! They pronounced them correctly every time I pointed randomly to one of the words on the board. It was magic! How could such a simple solution suddenly correct built-in mistakes? I created a webpage at once that was updated regularly. And I used the strategy till the end of the school year. The students' pronunciation improved significantly. This simple, homemade recipe generated even greater enthusiasm and engagement the following school year with my beginner EFLers in the5th grade. It caught on immediately and everyone wanted their recipe accepted for more problematic words, because it would go on the Internet. :-) Once again I created a webpage and had a notetaker in every class to jot down the words and their pronunciation. I'd take the sheet of paper home every day and update the webpage. It was low tech and high tech working together for the benefit of the students. This webpage was their reference for pronunciation. Why does this mean so much to me? Because correct pronunciation is a very significant part of making yourself understood and getting your message across. Years later, with the encouragement of the Radical English teachers group, I started working on an e-dictionary that was self-published at the beginning of September 2014. I hope it will become known to all Portuguese-speaking teachers and learners of English. We're many millions worldwide. And I also hope that it may inspire English teachers of other native languages to try out something similar. You're welcome to download the sample or get the full version Pronunciation Made Easy for Portuguese-speaking learners of English with 3.500 words. Just click the "e-Dictionary" tab above. And feel free to spread the word whether through mouth or mouse! Your students will be grateful! Enjoy pronouncing!!! :-) After months of hard, but very enjoyable work, Pronunciation Made Easy is out and just a click away. It was published earlier today, Sep. 6, on the 53rd anniversary of a four-year move to the States, a life-changing experience for me. To get a free sample or buy the dictionary, click the e-Dictionary tab (above). I hope it will be a very useful tool for Portuguese-speaking students to learn to pronounce many common English words in an easy and fun way. And I hope that other languages will also try to bridge the L1 and L2. Thank you to my Radical English colleagues and friends for encouraging me to carry out this project! :-) |
Teresa Almeida d'EçaRetired EFL teacher. Teacher trainer in Web 2.0 tools. Member of the Webheads in Action community of practice. Member of the "Radical English" Teachers group. Archives
October 2019
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